I did it! I climbed Mt. Hood. Wow! Mt. Hood is actually the second most climbed alpine summit in the world, second to Mt. Fuji in Japan. It's summit at 11,240 feet was pretty breathtaking. It was freezing at the top, with the wind blowing frantically, but it was well worth it. With the sun rising, and the cool views, this experience is one that I will never forget. Now I can say that I really climbed a mountain.

It all started on May 11, 2001, at about 9:30 pm. My sister and I were picked up and we headed to John, my sister's co-worker's house, where we would all meet and carpool together. We arrived at Timberline past 11 pm and started to get ready. We had reservations to take a Snowcat at 12 am. After putting on our gear, we then headed to the Lodge to get registered and go to the restroom before the big climb. There was some confusion to where we were to catch the Snowcat. When we figured out that the Snowcat was to pick us up near the lodge, we found out that the driver was going to be late. We ended up leaving around 1 am. Here's a picture of us in front of the Snowcat.

Here we are inside the Snowcat. We arrived at the top of the Palmer Ski Lift at around 1:30 am or so. It was a rough ride, pretty bumpy. As the Snowcat noisily moved up, I was amazed seeing all the other climbers with their headlights on, which was pretty much all you could see... their lights. There were so many people out there...and there I was taking the easy way up. I don't really regret it. :)



Here's a cool pic of my sister heading up. There was just enough light to see the Pearly Gates which are the rock formations which lead to the summit.


Here I am at night with my headlamp and ice axe. It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be. I took off my other coat as it got hotter as we were climbing.




Here I am getting harnessed up. It was nice of Dale, my sister's co-worker to take us all up and bring all the rope and harnesses. I wouldn't of had this cool experience without someone as knowledgeable and experienced as Dale. He's climbed Mt. Hood more than 12 times. Wow!


I felt good going up. We were climbing at a pretty good pace and had enough breaks. There were times when I felt like I could just keep going. Dale taught us a technique which was really useful for climbing called the rest step. It's a more efficient way to climb which uses less energy. It involves locking your back leg just after placing your other foot on the hill. You want to put all the weight on your bones on this back foot. It was hard at first to get used to but this technique helped a lot.

After a while we came to the first point of interest, Illumination Rock. It was such a nice night out. This is a picture of the rock as we were coming down.

Sulfur filled the air as we came across what they called the Devil's Kitchen. We saw fumes coming out of the fumaroles, or steam vents. Mt. Hood is a volcano you know. Here's a cool picture of steam coming out of a fumarole.





The Hogsback Ridge came next. We roped up a little bit before this ridge. As we were coming down, there was a lot more people on this ridge roping up. It's a great break spot. Here are a couple of pictures showing the Ridge. You can see how there were so many people out that day.




Then came the scary part. The crevasse called the Bergschrund. It wasn't really that bad, being only about a less than a foot opening between the mountain and glacier. But looking down and seeing how deep it was, that was scary...as well as the thought of falling down it. To the left is a picture close to the Bergschrund when we were heading down. Then came the Pearly Gates, the rock formations that lead to the summit as you can see in the pic on the right.



Finally at the top! What an accomplishment! It was great! Here's a group picture of the five us: Me, my sister, Dale, John, and Frank.





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